Interactive TV (ITV) applications enable viewers to interact with content they see on television. For example, an ITV application (ITV app) can allow a consumer to be presented with a polling event while watching election coverage on his or her favorite news station. The viewer can respond to the poll using his television remote control. There are numerous types of ITV applications such as Request for Info or RFI (to receive a coupon, brochure, etc.), trivia, and games, accessing news headlines or weather updates, and even click-to-buy or t-commerce. Programmers can create one or more “events” (referred herein as “ITV application event(s)” or simply “ITV event(s)”) that utilize a given ITV application for a particular presentation to users. Following the example above, a voting/polling ITV application may be provided and an event of the voting/polling ITV application may be, for example, a particular question associated with a particular television show, such as “As of today, do you plan to vote for the Democrat or the Republican? A] Democrat; B] Republican; C] Independent; D] Undecided”. The same voting and polling app can be used for a different event in which another question and/or answer set is presented to viewers that pertains to different television content.
ITV offers many benefits to the marketplace. For example, ITV can provide consumers with a deeper and richer experience with the content they enjoy and the convenience of receiving information and products through the television medium. ITV can also provide programmers and advertisers new opportunities to develop relationships with individual consumers and gain new metrics on consumer behavior not available through the traditional television measurement processes (e.g. number of responses to an ITV offer), and distributors envision new services to offer to subscribers.
Currently, consumers have very little control over their ITV experiences. For example, in the cable television distribution network, the cable operator does not enable a consumer to select which ITV applications they are exposed to. The cable operator can disallow an ITV application to all its subscribers, or it can disallow all ITV applications from a given subscriber, but it does not allow some ITV applications to be selectively available to some subscribers and not to others.
Thus there is a need for technology that enables consumers to control their ITV experiences in such a way that works for all parties in the television ecosystem. This benefits the consumer, for example, by enabling him or her to shield children from ITV offers (i.e. ITV application parental control), and to control their own television experience. This also benefits programmers, advertisers and distributors. For example, consumer feedback allows them to develop ITV applications and offers that are most desirable to consumers.